Characters of Shakespear's Plays

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Page 135 ROMEO AND JULIET. Romeo and Juliet is the only tragedy which Shakespear
has written entirely on a love-story. It is supposed to have been his first play, and
it deserves to stand in that proud rank. There is the buoyant spirit of youth in
every ...

Page 136 Romeo and Juliet are in love, but they are not lovesick. Every thing speaks the
very soul of pleasure, the high and healthy pulse of the passions: the heartbeats,
the blood circulates and mantles throughout. Their courtship is not an insipid ...

Page 145 Come, gentle night ; come, loving, black-brow'd night, Give me my Romeo : and
when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in ... Speaking of Romeo and Juliet,
he says, " It was reserved for Shakespear to unite purity of heart and the glow of ...

Page 149 Of the passionate scenes in this tragedy, that between the Friar and Romeo when
he is told of his sentence of banishment, that between Juliet and the Nurse when
she hears of it, and of the death of her cousin Tybalt (which bear no proportion ...

Page 150 A passage which this celebrated actor and able commentator on Shakespear (
actors are the best commentators on the poets) did not give with equal truth or
force of feeling was the one which Romeo makes at the tomb of Juliet, before he
...

Popular passages

Page 174 - I'll kneel down, And ask of thee forgiveness. So we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news ; and we'll talk with them too, Who loses,- and who wins ; who's in, who's out ; And take...

Page 222 - All murder'd: for within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, Allowing him a breath, a little scene, To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks...

Page 351 - When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd, Desiring this man's art and that man's scope...

Page 36 - Would he were fatter: — But I fear him not. Yet if my name were liable to fear, I do not know the man I should avoid So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much ; He is a great observer, and he looks Quite through the deeds of men...

Page 187 - God save him ; No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home : But dust was thrown upon his sacred head ; Which, with such gentle sorrow he shook off, His face still combating with tears and smiles, The badges of his grief and patience, That had not God, for some strong purpose, steel'd The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted, And barbarism itself have pitied him.

Page 87 - O, let not virtue seek Remuneration for the thing it was ; For beauty, wit, High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all To envious and calumniating time.

Page 156 - This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, — often the surfeit of our own behaviour, — we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars...